


Strength is a Matter of Perspective

by hopeh_wa



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Murderswap, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-09-17
Packaged: 2017-12-26 20:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/970125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeh_wa/pseuds/hopeh_wa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Murderswap AU for the chapter two trial of Dangan Ronpa. Obviously heavy spoilers are involved for the actual chapter two and the events prior to it in chapter one. Chihiro Fujisaki wanted to become stronger, but it turns out he never knew his own strength when push came to shove.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strength is a Matter of Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> I already posted this on my Tumblr (ushiromiyanatsuhi) about a month ago and figured I might as well upload it here, since I like how it turned out. I might write more murderswap later on, but this was the one that I had the most ideas for to begin with, so there's no telling.

"Couldn’t it…have been you, Fujisaki-san? No…Fujisaki-kun."

There is a stunned silence in the trial room, not for the first time, but certainly this is the one that lasts the longest. No one knows where to start, least of all Chihiro Fujisaki, who stares at Naegi blankly, tears welling up and beginning to pour over. The trial room is well air-conditioned, so much so that it feels as though they’re being put into some kind of icebox on occasion, but Fujisaki has never felt more flustered.  
"Fujisaki…kun?” Celes-san repeats tentatively, breaking the silence at long last. Her hand, as always, covers her mouth. She’s never one to let slip an unplanned emotion, and her time spent gambling has taught her how to keep from being read like an open book. “What do you mean, Naegi-kun?”

Naegi tries to put into words what has been bugging him for a while now. He goes from the start, heedless of those big eyes Fujisaki is staring at him with. If he could, he wouldn’t want to tell this secret—it’s not his to tell. But their lives depend on this. Without this crucial bit of knowledge, without his fellow classmates swayed, it could mean an execution for all of them, with the real culprit walking free.

Fujisaki won’t agree to training sessions with girls. They have never seen Fujisaki wearing a swimsuit, or in the girls’ changing room even once, for that matter. And wasn’t it strange, to always prefer the company of guys but shy away from so much as a long conversation with another girl?

The damning fact is Fujisaki’s electronic ID card. Just show that, Naegi says, and you could prove you couldn’t get into the boys’ changing room. Kuwata-kun’s card is missing; it was found on Oowada-kun’s corpse, but Oowada-kun couldn’t have even used it to let someone else in after him. Monobear’s rule still stands: lending cards to another student is prohibited.

Fujisaki can’t show it. Won’t show it. Everyone is deeply reminded of Leon Kuwata’s refusal to show his tool set in the trial before this as Fujisaki-kun stammers, teary-eyed, weak excuses of how the card is missing, how it shouldn’t be necessary to prove such a thing. But no one says so. They still have a long way to go in this trial, and no one’s certain of anything just yet.

Finally, Fujisaki manages to wedge in a valid point. “Just b-because I could enter the locker room, that doesn’t prove that I k-killed Oowada-kun!” he stutters. His knees are shaking and his sleeves rub ceaselessly at his eyes now, trying to stop the tears that continue to sting at the corner of his eyes.

“Certainly,” Oogami-san admits, “there are many boys here who could have entered that changing room. Perhaps it is a bit rash to blame Fujisaki, when we have yet to provide an alibi for everyone else.”

Simultaneously, however, Kirigiri-san and Naegi both shake their heads.

“I investigated that changing room myself, thoroughly,” Kirigiri-san says as tonelessly as ever. How does she manage to be so composed when everyone else, the guilty and the innocent alike, shake helplessly in this room every time? “The shape of the wound. The murder weapons used—”

“Weapons? Wasn’t there only one murder weapon, Kirigiri Kyouko-dono?” Yamada-kun pipes up, understandably surprised.

“No, there were several. The assumption that it was only one murder weapon was because we only found blood spatter on one of the dumbbells, but when I examined the corner of some of the training equipment itself, it matched perfectly with the injuries on Oowada-kun’s skull.”

Another long pause ensues, this one accompanied by a unanimously queasy atmosphere. Naegi averts his gaze from her blank face, and hopes he never touches a corpse and its wounds with such ease and casual skill.

He clears his throat, and looks straight back at Fujisaki-kun, and part of him aches to betray all that’s left of what he knows, but he can’t afford compassion when it comes at such a high price. “Kirigiri-san is right. Fujisaki-kun, I’ve spent time with you for several days now. You told me about wanting to train. You told me you were looking for someone to ask, and in the end, you didn’t seem interested in asking anyone except…Oowada-kun.”

There’s nothing left to argue after that point, only a basic explanation. Naegi fills in the gaps of what they now know and didn’t before, and explains the whole case from beginning to end. Fujisaki-kun met Oowada-kun in the boys’ changing room. Then, Oowada-kun lifted one of the heavier dumbbells (they’d found one far too heavy for anyone else but Oogami-san to lift, and Oogami-san couldn’t have entered the room) and aimed for Fujisaki—and missed.

Fujisaki ran, probably trying to save his own life, and picked up one of the other dumbbells. Not the heaviest, but not the lightest either; it’s a miracle what you can lift with adrenaline, even if you’re not even five feet tall. Oowada-kun fell, and Fujisaki, still in flight-or-fight mode, kicked in Oogami’s head against the corner of the weight lifting station, as Kirigiri-san had pointed out. While it was probably an impulsive murder, there’s little room to doubt that the motive Monobear supplied them about secrets and embarrassing memories factored in somewhere.

They already established earlier, of course, that Togami was the one who tampered with the crime scene to fake a crucifixion. Syo laughs loudly and brings up again what a shoddy job his imitation was, but no one else even remotely feels like laughing.

Beyond that, even Naegi doesn’t know.

There’s not even silence at the end of his explanation, only murmurs and whispers. The others are convinced, by now. There’s little room to cast doubt on anyone else, and they haven’t heard a single appropriate counterargument yet. The only one who has yet to say anything at all is Ishimaru-kun, who’s been stricken silent since the moment they saw Oowada-kun’s corpse hung, crucified between two poles. The room grows stiff with the tension as wary eyes fix on the child no one had thought capable of hurting a fly, and then suddenly—

Fujisaki-kun screams.

It’s a long, high-pitched wail, drawn out as Fujisaki-kun falls to his knees and buries his face in his hands. His entire body shakes with the force of his sobs, but no one offers him a shoulder to cry on or a hand up. His sobbing continues until it’s little more than dry heaving, with no more tears left to cry, but even then, he refuses to stand back up. He’s completely, utterly given up.

“I…killed him,” Fujisaki-kun croaks. “I…ended up…killing Oowada-kun.” There’s no defensive tone to his voice, nothing other than pure, unadulterated fear, sadness, and regret. The look on his face is so pitiful that Naegi has to look away again; his eye catches Monobear, sitting straight up at the edge of his seat, and his stomach takes another plunge at how cruelly their tormentor is enjoying this game.

“I told Oowada-kun my secret! I told him, I, I thought he would never tell anyone else. He…he got so angry, though. He came at me, h-he was going to kill me…and I fought back. I didn’t even plan to, but I fought back, and I couldn’t stop myself, and I…killed…Owada-kun,” he says. There’s none of the hysterical, self-justifying edge that Kuwata-kun’s voice had had, only a bewildered tone of despair.

Surprisingly, Ishimaru-kun steps forward towards Chihiro Fujisaki’s seat, hesitantly at first, and then with more strength. He stops three feet away, looking down at him, just as bewildered, just as desperate. “Why…why did you do…such a thing? Why did kyoudai do such a thing? I don’t…I don’t understand…Fujisaki-kun,” he says. He’s probably not really as confused as he sounds, but his words still demand an answer, as do his eyes, which are beginning to blur and sting with tears of his own.

“I-Ishimaru-kun…” Fujisaki stares back, frightened, his face tear-stained and pink in places where his short nails have scraped his flesh in anxiety.

“Kyoudai…kyoudai would never have tried to kill someone else,” Ishimaru says, but the conviction in his voice is only half-there. “And I don’t believe you would either, Fujisaki-kun. Therefore this must be…yes, someone else must have done this…”

Upupupupu! Everyone winces as Monobear stands up in his chair; no one meets his eye as he spins a slow circle before pointing tauntingly at Ishimaru-kun and Fujisaki-kun both. “You’re wrong there, Ishimaru-kun! Mondo Oowada-kun was most definitely, positively, absolutely going to kill Fujisaki-kun! To think little Fujisaki-kun stopped him in his tracks so decisively there—this is a much better plot twist than our first trial!” Fujisaki bites his bottom lip as he tries not to sob again, and Ishimaru’s knees buckle so that he leans against the wall just to keep himself standing.

“Why…” Ishimaru-kun repeats again. “Why, Fujisaki-kun? Why…to my kyoudai…” He stares fixedly at a point on the wall across the room, despite the fact that everyone else’s eyes are drawn to him.  
Chihiro Fujisaki struggles back to his feet, very slowly. He wipes off his face and pulls down his skirt, but it doesn’t really make him look any more presentable by this point. Then, still terrified, he closes the gap between himself and Ishimaru-kun, and tugs lightly on the other boy’s sleeve. Ishimaru-kun hisses in a breath, shudders, but he doesn’t pull his arm away.

“I never meant to…I never wanted to,” Fujisaki-kun says, his voice shaking. “I just wanted to be like Oowada-kun! I wanted to change! I wanted to be stronger!” Ishimaru-kun still won’t look at him, won’t even turn his head, and Fujisaki’s eyes begin to redden once again. “Ishimaru-kun, I’m sorry!” he says, and that one sentence has more strength than anything anyone else has said since they came to this godforsaken school.

Ishimaru turns to look at him, and there’s still accusation, still despair still deep in his eyes, but there’s also the beginnings of a resigned acceptance—until Monobear gets his say. With the push of a button, Fujisaki-kun is dragged away by chains and restraints, still trembling with terror, and Ishimaru never got to say all the tens, hundreds, thousands of millions of words that were right on the tip of his tongue.

There’s still the shock factor, still the horror after the execution is over, but it’s more resigned than the last time. Naegi feels sick with the thought that it only took one time for them to become acclimated to this sort of thing. And he clenches his fists and wonders what kind of strength it will take to get them out of this place, if that strength doesn’t kill them all first.


End file.
